Welcome to the Hellmouth
by Trella
Summary: Seven years of Buffy. One hundred and forty four episode titles. One broken girl.


"Welcome to the Hellmouth," the beggar said in Spanish... She smiled and moved on. This was not really her town. It was still hot and the country was slowly waking up from its nap. It would be time for the harvest soon. The little boys begged the witch at the corner store for candy and the girls went back to their classrooms so they could each be a teacher's pet. "Never kill a boy on the first date," they learned, and the pack of girls giggled, thinking of boys and kisses. She continued walking and passed the haunting statue of an angel. She thought about the sky and the clouds and the trees. They reminded her of a jungle and in the jungle would be Tarzan. Only since it was the computer age, he would say instead, "I robot, you Jane. On the next street corner there was a gypsy entertaining little children with the amusements of the puppet show she had which would undoubtedly cause nightmares one day. Only, one of the children seemed to be an invisible girl, largely ignored by the rest. Out of mind, out of sight. Turns out the child was a prophecy girl, wise beyond her years of the coldness of life.

When she was bad her parents ignored her; the family had some assembly required. All she thought now was "School hard; rather be an Inca mummy girl than a student and then I can find a nice reptile boy so we can be together and go out on Halloween. And he can lie to me about the dark age and I can ask him, 'What's my line? What's my line?' and he'll love me forever." She did finally find a boy named Ted complaining about bad eggs in the grocery store. But the girl walking did not know this at the time about the child, and she kept walking. Surprise, it was still hot and the sun was still high but for the first time she felt like she had her innocence again and one of those manic phases had passed. She was no longer bewitched, bothered and bewildered; the passion lay there but she wasn't going to be killed by death. Not now, anyway. She thought about him sometimes and thought she could tell him one day, "I only have eyes for you," but in the meantime she would let him ignore the world and shut himself in and play go fish with his sick sister. Because the sister was becoming worse and he couldn't let himself live while the sickness was becoming more dangerous.

The sister's name was Anne and she lost her mind at a party. She thought she was going to be safe and around friends but really, she was just at a dead man's party surrounded by cold mockeries of friends that did not care. She had had faith, _hope_, and trick! they broke her. The beauty and the beasts tore her down until she lost all shreds of dignities she had. The homecoming was heartbreaking, and the only happy memory she could conjure was that one random time she sold band candy with her brother. Nothing else even resembled happy. She was lost forever in the dark dust of her mind. But thus far, the girl knew only that his sister was sick because he mostly kept from her the major revelations of his life. He was not ready for a lover's walk; all he possessed was the wish for his sister's mind to make amends so maybe one day they could be a family again and make gingerbread and not be so helpless anymore. She walked some more, remembering painfully how she had been the Zeppo, how she had joined some bad girls and tried to ignore the consequences. In real life she would never have done those things; it was like a dopplegangland, and the only enemies she had were herself. She always waited until everyone was out of earshot before crying; she had few choices left and she needed to preserve her dignity. She wished more than anything to be a happy, normal girl, to go to the prom, to go to graduation, to go to parties after graduation.

But she would never even be a freshman or complain about living conditions.

She let the harsh light of day usher in the dark. She was not strong enough to face fear, itself. She started drinking, ignoring the thought, "Beer bad" and trying to convince herself that she really was wild at heart. The initiative to save herself was no longer in her heart; all she had were pangs and she could only think about him and how much she wanted to say to him, "I love you; I will remember you." She turned the corner and found herself in front of a crazy car painted completely orange with just a little something blue splashed in certain places. And she felt a hush come over her and the feeling of being doomed lifted just a bit; if some person could paint a car that happily and maybe be a new man for just a car, she could regain her soul, couldn't she? She could learn that there was no I in team and to let people, real people, in and to say, "Goodbye Iowa farm boys, I'm going to work with the real men now, no matter how dangerous they are; they need me and I need them, because I'm this year's girl." And maybe at first they would say, "Who are you?" but they would understand her need for sanctuary see her for the superstar she was and show her where the wild things are but also where the quiet paradoxes like the new moon rising were. But she would not be the Yoko factor, because she understood the primeval need for a deep, unbroken bond that could overcome all the restless flaws of humanity.

She could be strong, resilient, resourceful, and resist the thrall of the dark like Buffy vs. Dracula; she thought to herself, "I can find the real me." Past the car was a temporary cafe serving as the replacement for a place under construction. "I must be out of my mind," she thought, because suddenly she didn't want coffee anymore or to be there; the only thing she could think was that there was no place like home and even if she didn't have a family, she could go back, start over, act like a fool for love and fight the shadow of the past. It was no use lying in the dark in a strange place and listening to fear; she needed to run into the woods and fight the triangle of darkness that seems to wash away everything. She needed to discipline herself again, set a checkpoint to make sure she was all there, and to regain the blood ties with humanity even if it might crush her. And she thought of him again, and she thought, "I was made to love you," and she felt a shiver cross the body of every being in the vicinity who would forever remember the feeling of such a pure feeling in the air. Maybe what she really needed was an intervention from herself, some tough love telling her to pull herself up from this spiral and cast the weight of the world off her shoulder or just learn to bear it if she wanted to give him the gift of happiness and life.

So she walked aimlessly and began bargaining with herself, hoping that through the bargaining she could find some sort of peace to stay with her through and after life. The pain flooded her again and made it hard to view life, serial flashes of the past bringing her all the way to the beginning but she thought for the first time that she could stand it all again once more, with feeling and she could still overcome it. Only then could she truly have a blank state of mind, tabula rasa, with the fears of the past smashed and her head no longer wrecked so much. And the hurt was not gone, but it could at least be chopped into little bits at Doublemeat Palace, for all she cared; the past was the past and she knew dead things stayed dead and she was now older and far away, able to control herself. So she told herself, "As you were; turn back and face the past, ring all of hell's bells and destroy the devil himself." And she felt just a little bit normal again and she knew entropy would take its course and she would end up once again seeing red and fighting the villains of the mind. And then she found herself nearly back to where she started, tracing back the streets, only two to go and she could pack her bags with a grave sincerity and turn back.

She understood enough now and still had many lessons to learn but she could see the truth now, and told herself, "Running away is beneath you; bring yourself back to the same time, same place, and start to help yourself." Only when she fixed herself could she be selfless and begin to help him and together they could try to heal Anne and stop these mindless conversations with dead people, leaving her not a disturbed sleeper but a happier girl aware of the world. And she begged whoever would listen, "Let this resolve never leave me; bring on the night. Showtime. It will know my potential for destruction. The killer in me will destroy the bad in it; I will overcome the darkness." And she thought maybe when this was over they could go on their real first date but first, she thought, "I have to get it done, to go back and finish this. Then I can be a storyteller and turn the lies my parents told me into the past, something I can face." And perhaps one day she could help the bad, dirty girls and bring them out of the empty places so they would not be so touched with despair. By the end, she knew she was strong and that even the end of days could not even touch her. She knew that she had been meant for this all along, to face her worst fears and rip them out into daylight. And then she could truly live. She had been chosen.


End file.
